


a birth of broken dreams

by dropofrum (95echelon)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Slow Burn, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It, and i do mean slow, boy oh boy, haha moral resolve, i have none, i swore i wouldnt write one of these, rated for language, yay for glacially paced romances?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-05 13:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12190590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/95echelon/pseuds/dropofrum
Summary: Seven times she had died, and seven times Sansa Stark had been reborn in the same moment, screaming at the Sept of Baelor, as her Father was murdered and her world shattered around her.Seven times, and this time, Sansa had to be better; she had to be smarter and colder andbetter. This time, the Night Kinghadto die. The gods would not grant her an eighth chance.





	1. Was It A Dream?

## PROLOGUE

 

Are you paying attention?

 

_\- I'm sorry, Sansa, but I have to, I have to. I love him, don’t you see? I love him, so he must die -_

 

Good.

 

_\- our home, Robb. Ours, and Jon's, and Arya's, wherever they are. We have to fight for it! -_

 

If you're not listening carefully, you will miss things. 

 

_\- a list of names. Names of the people she's going to kill. You're on it, you know. You're at the very top. -_

 

Important things. 

 

_\- there is only one thing men want from pretty girls, she told me. So I gave him what he wanted, love and lust and the promise of a crown. And now he's dead, just like all the Others -_

 

I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. 

 

_\- don't trust anyone, she said to me, too. Life is safer that way. So why did she trust **me**? Didn't she **know**? Didn't she -_

 

You think, that because you are sitting where you are, and I am sitting where I am, that you are in control of what is about to happen. 

 

_\- I don't admire her. But I learnt a lot from her. I'm alive, aren't I? And you're about to die -_

 

You're mistaken. 

 

_\- if you're going to kill me, do it now, while there's still a little bit of me left. Burn my bones, please, gods, burn my bones. I **don't** want to do this again, I don't, I **don't** -_

 

I am in control.

* * *

 

"Hello, Mother," Sansa says quietly, wincing at the way her voice sounds here, flat and oddly distorted, as if the quality of the air itself is uneven, changing the tenor of her words.

Catelyn Stark is seated, at the other end of the dimly-lit room, candles flickering around her, bright golden and steady, wax dripping from their holders like frozen waterfalls. Sansa fights the urge to run to the woman facing her, to throw herself into warm, welcoming arms, but she isn't- this isn't her mother. Her skin is pale as freshly-fallen snow, her auburn hair the rich red of a weirwood tree's canopy. Her eyes are open, a flat, alien crimson blinking in her mother's familiar face, tear tracks of blood running down her delicate, Tully nose.

No. This is not her mother.  
Sansa should know - this is the seventh time they've met.

"You have failed," the creature wearing Catelyn Stark's face says. The _gods_ wearing Catelyn Stark's face.

"Yes."

"The child of Death lives. His army marches on."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I-" Sansa falters. "I thought it was Jon, at first. He tried three times. He _**died**_ three times, and winter came for me. Then I thought Daenerys might've been the one. The prophecy fits her, and she truly believes she is Azor Ahai. She's impulsive, and bloodthirsty, yes, but she-" Sansa shudders, knees beginning to buckle under the weight of her strain. "She died too, twice, and winter came for me."

Catelyn's mouth thins in a hard line, and Sansa feels a piercing pain shot through her belly. Dark, rich wetness trickles down her thighs, and Sansa stares horrified at the face of her Mother, as she collapses to the ground, hunching over in agony.  _Stop,_ she wants to plead, though she knows it'll do no good, wrapping her arms around her midsection, rocking on the stone floor, as her thighs soak with her womb's blood.  _Please, please stop._   _It hurts, Mama, please! It hurts!"_

"That is five times you've failed. What happened the sixth time? Who did you send to kill the King?"

"No one," Sansa gasps, her throat raw from holding back her screams. "I sent _no one._ I saved them all, and we had twelve  _good_ years. Happy years. I saved Mother, and Robb, and Arya, and Bran, and Rickon. I saved Winterfell. I  _lived."_

Mother's mouth twists into a sneer. "Yes," she hisses. "You took our gift, and you fell in  _love."_

 _Yes,_ Sansa thinks vehemently. _I lived, and I loved, and I was **happy**. And even you can't take that from me. _ And though she is here, scarred and bloody and tired beyond belief, Sansa looks up the red-eyed goddess and she smiles. Jon's voice whispers praise into her ears, love and filth and sweetness, and Sansa feels a curling, blossoming warmth in her, sunlight and honeyed. She may be dead, but she is not alone. She is not unloved.

The goddess smiles cruelly. "You will _not_ make that mistake again. You will _not_ carry his child again. You will _not_ love him again. This is my curse upon you, child. Until mountains fall, and the seas run dry, until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, my curse upon you will stay."

Sansa shudders, as the sunlight in her veins winks away, ice in her blood, ice entrapping her heart. Catelyn Stark rises from her seat, and crosses the length of the room, to tower above her. She bends down at the waist, cold, leathery fingers tilting up Sansa's chin, and presses a hard, faintly metallic kiss to her mouth.

"Now," says the god wearing her mother's face,  _"live."_

* * *

 

 

Sansa wakes up screaming.  

" _No!_ " she screams, as the nightmare swims into focus again, a guardsman's locked around her elbows as she thrashes impotently in his grasp. "Please, _please, no!”_  

The salt of her tears fills her mouth, briny and hot, and the smoke of the incense burning in the sept behind them, seeps through her nostrils, thick in the back of her throat, choking her on salt and smoke.

The crowd surrounding the Sept of Baelor roars their approval, as the Queen's Justice mounts the steps, pulling on a dark hood, and unsheathing his blade, and high above them, the red comet arcs through the sky, blazing across the heavens in a brilliant, bloody trail.

"Please, you _can't! **You can't!"**_ The words fall from her throat with shattering agony, but Sansa already knows this is always how the story must begin. 

Ser Illyn Payne swings the sword, as ravens burst into the blue summer sky. Ned Stark dies. And somewhere, she knows, somewhere in the crowd, is Arya. But Father is dead, and Arya will run away, and Sansa is powerless to save the people she loves. 

This is always how her tale begins - in blood and failure and death. And seven times, this is how it ended. 

* * *

 

But not this time. 

Not this time. 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! if this sounds familiar to you, it's because i lifted huge sections of text bodily from the opening sequence of the imitation game. bc. y'know. why not. yay for plagiarism! if you've been on ff.net, you might recognize some similarity to Wastelands of Time by joe6991, which i read when i was 14 and i was so, just, blown away by it, i had to sit down and re-think my whole life. so i drew from that, a bit. (i'm not original, sue me.) (and yes, this was deleted and re-uploaded bc?? technical issues? i'm so sorry about that.)
> 
> hit kudos if you liked the opening to my trash fic <3


	2. this is a call to arms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey did you see how the total chapters number disappeared bc i dont fckn know how long this story will be. cool. cool. read on.

 

 

_She will kill him, for he is treacherous and cowardly, and a fool.  
_ _She will kill him, and it won't matter, but for the ash it leaves upon her soul._

* * *

 

Someone was at his door, rapping on the wood in an impatient staccato, and Pycelle croaked, “Come in!” stooped over his desk, raven-feather quill trembling in his hand as he inked a reply to the maester at Starfall. The tax receipts had not tallied for the Marches, and if Cersei happened to take note, it was his bloody neck on the chopping block, wasn’t it?

The door creaked open slowly, and Pycelle struggled up to a more appreciably presentable pose, glad that he’d sent off Petyr’s whore a while back, and burnt enough incense to be rid off her cloying Myrish perfume. The slut had lovely tits, but gods, she was heavy-headed with her foreign scents. Made Pycelle gag, she did, oftentimes, and if it wasn’t for how tight her cunt got around his cock, he would have located a replacement a twelvemonth ago. 

Lady Sansa entered the room, neck downbent, fingers tightly tangled in front of her, and she ducked in a quick, nervous curtsey, barely looking at Pycelle in the eye before her eyes darted down and away, like a frightened little rabbit.

“My lady?” Pycelle asks, creasing his brow. “Is something a-matter?”

Lady Sansa nodded, but did not speak, and so Pycelle nudged her further, asking, “Does something ail you, my lady?” He gentled his tone - if Robb Stark’s army was vanquished, there was yet a chance that this girl would be Queen. It wouldn’t do for her to dislike him. “Lady Sansa,” he said, as quietly and simply as he could manage, smiling broadly at her. “You may rely upon me to keep your confidence. Tell me what ails you, my lady, and I shall have it fixed in a trice.”

“My-“ she stammered, eyes fixed upon her own feet, color rushing to her cheeks, as she pressed her hands to her belly. “It’s on my- Redness, and itchy, and dry,” she whispered, as if mortified, and her hands drifted lower still, until they were pressed to her cunt. 

Pycelle swallowed. 

Lady Sansa was so little yet… Only ten-and-four. She likely had no hair, down there, all smooth and bald and pink… A _gift_. A gift from the _gods_.

“Aye,” Pycelle nodded, swallowing hard and pasting a kindly, harmless smile upon his mien. “Never fear, my lady. I have an idea of your troubles, but first I shall need to examine you.”

“Ex- Examine?” Sansa gasped, big blue eyes widening in horror, as she stumbled a step back, and immediately, Pycelle rose from his seat, clamping a bony, veined hand around her shoulder, forcing her still. 

“Yes,” he said, unceremoniously. “Examine. Now, why don’t you go lie down there, and pull up your skirts?”

But the little idiot was shaking her head now, mutely, refusal and fear writ large in her eyes.

“My _lady_ ,” Pycelle snapped, as his cock hardened beneath his robes, twitching at the thought of being so close to such fresh, young cunny, tight and virginal and never yet breached. “ _Go_. Lie. _Down_."

The girl whimpered softly, and blood rushed quicker to his cock. “I-“ she said, as her legs began to slowly, haltingly, carry her to the bed. “Could you- Could you give me something? So I may sleep through the- the-“

She could not complete her sentence, the petrified, whimpering child, her shoulders hunched with fear as he perched precariously at the edge of the mattress beside her. 

“Milk of the poppy,” Pycelle murmurs, all gentle, forgiving acquiesence, and the Lady Sansa looks up at him then, smiling tremulously at him, blue eyes guileless and huge in her fair, fine-boned face. By the gods, it is as if she is speaking the words he's whispering in his own mind. "Of course, my lady," he agrees, rummaging in the hidden pockets of his sleeves until a small, translucent vial slips out. Along with it, a spare, jet-black raven quill flutters towards the ground. 

"Oh," Sansa gasps, and snatches it out of the air, turning the feather this way and that until it catches the meager sunlight streaming from the rookery above them, the caw of the birds soft and muted by the roar of the ocean. 

"Oh, that's so pretty," she gasps, the idiot, and turns her face up to look at Pycelle. "How many ravens do you have, Grand Maester?" she asks wonderingly. "At Winterfell, we only had twelve, but you..." She pauses, reverent, eyes wide with awe as she gazes up the Maester. "You must have scores upon _scores_."

Pycelle smiles. "Aye, my lady. Normally, we have six-and-twenty, but today we have eight-and-thirty birds roosting above us. Many are the capitol's own, of course," he continues genially, settling down on the bed beside her, the weight of him on the mattress making her slip into his side, warm and silken and soft. "Six from the Reach, and four-"

"Four from Dorne," the girl says. "One from the Iron Islands, five from the Westerlands," and her voice is low now, steady and relentless, an unstoppable deluge, as Pycelle gapes at her, at this child of four-and-ten, with a spine forged of steel, and eyes like chips of frozen ice. 

"How-" and it is his turn to stammer now, trembling, and blanched, his breath putrid in the smoky air. "How do you know?"

Sansa ignores him. "One from the Riverlands," she continues, "and one... One from the Wall. Am I correct, Grand Maester?"

Pycelle bobs in agreement, the room turning cold despite the summer sun beating down upon the capitol, sweat tricking down his temples, his breath sharp and wheezing with fear. 

Sansa Stark smiles, her arm flashing in a graceful practiced motion, and when Pycelle glances down there is a knife in her hand, held hilt-first.

He looks back up, scrambling back on his bed, shaking his head and the stench of ammonia and piss fills the room as she crawls to him on all fours. When his back hits the wall, and Sansa Stark is inches from his nose, Pycelle whimpers in fear. 

' _Sssssh_ ,' she says, and the knife is a blur of silver beneath his nose, the sharp sudden burn of something, and the brief, burning burst of pain. Pycelle's mouth drops open, but no sound escapes, as the pain richochets, burning brighter, sharper, crystalline and jagged and it hurts, it hurts, _mama_ , mama, please, it _hurts_ -

* * *

 

 

 

_She will kill him, and the fall of an empire will begin.  
_ _She will kill, and bear the mark of a murderer upon her heart, and begin to unravel the threads of fate._

_Her story always begins in death._

* * *

 

Hot, coppery blood trickles out his mouth, and the last thing Pycelle sees, is clear, unfathomable blue. A summer sky of blue, and the smell of roses. He almost smiles. 

* * *

 

"Fire!" cry the guardsmen stationed at the ramparts of White Sword Tower, thundering down the stairs to set the alarms. "Fire in the Rookery! Fire! FIRE!"

* * *

 

When the smoke has finally dissipated, it is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and his newest whitecloak, who enter Maester Pycelle's chamber, mouth and nose covered in dampened cloth, squinting in the soot-thick air, eyes watering as they make their way inside. But there is naught left of the Grand Maester, a man who has watched six kings live and die; only bones, and those too are warped and blackened beyond recognition, flesh still smoking, charred.

"The fire burned hot," Jaime croaks, and Sandor Clegane grunts his assent. Jaime rolls his eyes, before turning his gaze up, high up, where the ravens roosted. Only blue skies meet him, and he sighs.

"And we've lost all the bloody ravens, right in the middle of a war." He turns and starts to make his way out, stepping over debris that still smokes and hisses, Clegane following at his heel like the faithful mongrel he is. "Well, then," he comments lightly, as they exit the tower, breathing in fresh lungfuls of salty sea air. "This is horribly inconvenient. Father will not be pleased."

* * *

 

 

_She will kill.  
_ _She will kill.  
_ _This is the worst part._

_(This is not the worst part.)_

* * *

 

 

But there are ravens in the skies, unbeknownst to them all, carrying messages the length and breadth of Westeros, and farther still - they go to Dorne, and the Marches, and the Vale. To Pentos, even, and Vaes Dothrak and Slaver's Bay. To Riverrun, and the Dreadfort, and Winterfell. To the Wall. To unknown corners, and unimportant folk, to merchants and traitors and sailors and liars.

They bear unmarked seals, and messages that mean nothing, nothing yet.  
And a promise. A promise that another message will arrive soon. A message from a friend.

 _Trust me,_ the letters, all, seem to say to the men and women who read them with wide eyes, and shaky hands, hearts beating too quick in their chests, as their secrets are inked out with forgiveness and grace.  _Terrible things are coming, I know, but trust me._


	3. the children of a lesser god

Tyrion entered Shae's chambers, hastily pushing the door closed behind him, and stopped in his tracks.

“Lady Sansa,” he choked out, steeling his expression into polite neutrality. “Lord Varys. This is… a surprise.”

Sansa smiled, a small, tired stretch of her lips, rising from her seat, and ambling to the decanter, sloshing out a generous measure of Dornish red into the last winecup, and handing it to a dumbfounded Tyrion.

“Sit, my lord,” Sansa said, carelessly waving to an open chair, as she took her seat with a graceless thump, winecup precariously tilting in her hand as she smiled again. Her blue eyes glittered with bleak amusement. “Shae and I were just talking about you.”

Tyrion stumbled to his seat, caught in a daze, glimpsing both Varys and Shae’s bemused grins from the corner of his eye. _How the hell did she get here? How did she know to **be** here? Varys, finding out that Tyrion had brought a guest, he could understand. He could expect it, even. Varys had ears everywhere._

_But Sansa?  
_ **_Sansa?_ **

And then Tyrion recalls the incident at Joffrey’s nameday. The drunken idiot from House Hollard, the one Joffrey had had choked to death on fine Arbor gold. He remembers the flat, bored look in Sansa’s eyes when they’d returned from the celebration, the way her mouth had twitched in disgust when she looked at Joffrey.

But she hadn’t been afraid… Not at all. 

Strange, that, for a girl of only ten-and-three, with her father so recently dead, and her brother declaring war. She had been cold, regal, dispassionate. Sansa had almost reminded him of… 

Well. Of Cersei. 

“Talking about me?” Tyrion asked, flashing Shae a hard, quick smile. “All good things, I hope,” he remarked.

“Oh, excellent things,” Sansa agreed, her voice so thoroughly uninflected, Tyrion didn't believe her for a second, as she sipped her wine with the comfortable ease of experience. “Shae and Lord Varys were just telling me stories they’ve heard about Valyria. Have you ever been, my lord?” 

“To _Valyria_?” Tyrion repeated, feeling like someone had rung a peal over his head. “No. I’m afraid I haven’t had the… ah. Pleasure.”

Sansa cocked her head to the side, eyes flat and cold. “You will,” she said quietly, and both Varys and Shae turned to her, faces falling slack with surprise. But Sansa merely smiled again, the purple bruises under her eyes seeming darker in the afternoon’s harsh light. She seemed... old.

Sansa rose from her seat abruptly, taking Shae’s hand and kissing her lightly on the cheek. “You’ll join me for dinner, tonight?” she asked. “I’d love to hear more about your travels.” 

Shae nodded, an uncertain smile on her face. “Of course, my lady,” she replied. “You’re very kind. Thank you.” 

Sansa waved off the gratitude, draining the rest of her wine in a quick, practiced swallow, and quirked a smile. “Not kind, Shae. Just bored.” She turned to Varys, bobbing a sharp curtsey, and then finally to Tyrion. “My lord,” she said. “Walk with me?” 

Tyrion raised a brow at that, chancing a quick look at Shae, who seemed absorbed in the bottom of her own wine glass. “Yes,” Tyrion said, his own wine untouched as he got off his chair and fell in step beside her. “Of course, my lady.”

He followed her out, carefully pulling the door shut behind them once more, and they walked, for a time, in companionable silence, the muted cacophony of the Keep and the capitol all around them. 

It was Sansa who broke their silence. “Don’t worry about Varys,” she said, calmly. “He likes Shae. He’ll keep quiet about her.” 

Tyrion stared up at her, shock plain on his face, and when Sansa caught his expression, she chuckled. “We have whores in the North too, my lord,” she pointed out gently, as if she wasn’t a highborn girl, as if it was entirely in the norm for her to even _know_ of- well. “Although,” Sansa continued dryly, “even we don’t have whores who fall in love with their clients.”

Tyrion fought to control his breathing. “She isn’t in love with me,” he gritted out, hands balling into fists.

“No?” Sansa asked. “It would be better if she was. She is your weakness, Lord Tyrion; to be safe, you should be her weakness too.” She paused, deliberately. “Mayhaps it is better this way - that you don’t love her, and she doesn’t love you. If you did, you would have to send her far, far away from this place.” She sounded heart-breakingly sad, and for a moment, it was on the tip of his tongue, to ask her if there is _anything_ he can do for her, anything at all. 

She was young, so young, and the capitol was a cruel place for young girls. 

And, Tyrion thought wryly, old men too. Pycelle's death weighed heavily on them all. And to die like that, cooked alive in your own bed... Seven hells, the man might have been slimy, but hadn't deserved _that._

“I’m too selfish to send her away,” Tyrion admitted, with a light shrug, and Sansa laughed once more, her unhappiness radiating like a cold, northern wind. 

She stepped in front of him, and came to a standstill. “Lord Tyrion,” she said, towering above him, her eyes bluer than the seas at Casterly Rock. “I want to keep Shae safe. I’d _like_ to keep Shae safe,” she said, pointedly, and Tyrion felt ice slither down his spine. “She seems like such a _nice_ girl, and you’ve brought her to such a _dangerous_ place…”

His nostrils flared, flames licking at his blood. _What sort of child **was** this? _

“What do you want?” he asked her, sharply. He’d had enough of this bloody mummer’s farce. Ten-and-three she may be, but it seemed to Tyrion that Sansa Stark was more dangerous than all of the Kingsguard combined.

She smiled once more, and Tyrion noticed how none of her smiles seemed to reach her eyes. “I need your help. I need to meet three... interested parties, shall we say, here, at the palace.”

“What? Whom? ... _why?_ ” Tyrion asked, wondering at the plot he was being pulled into.

“I have warnings to deliver, my lord,” she replied easily. “To prophets and liars and friends. Will you help?”

* * *

 

 

The last letter took three months to arrive at its destination.

A young slave-girl dashed up the stairs, bare-breasted, and slick with the faint gleam of exertion, a tightly-furled scroll in her right hand, the collar around her neck winking in the bright light of an Essosi sun.

"My lord," she said, when she skidded to a halt at the door to her master's inner chambers. He shifted, slightly, in his bath, to look at her, and smiled. 

"Ah, my dear girl," boomed the Spice King of Qarth, a gaggle of slave-girls perched in the enormous baths around him, their young, nude bodies slick and beautiful in the baths, an almost ghastly contrast to his monstrous, bulging form, his greedy, fat fingers, the black, avaricious glint of his eyes. "We have been waiting for you. Come, come," he said, his fat chins wobbling, his pale skin liver-spotted and sagging off his jowls. His smile was wide and blidingly white, even through the steam that rose off the surface of the bath, and callected damply on her skin.

A rivulet of sweat trailed between her small, dark-tipped breasts, as she smiled, and deferred, saying, "I beg your pardon, my lord, but I am here at the behest of Captain Hrozhar of Meereen. He has been passed a message, from a Westerosi Lord of the Marches, who was passed the message from the capital of Westeros itself."

"My, my. A scroll from King's Landing... This message is better-travelled than I," the merchant king muttered, frowning. "For..."

"Yes," confirms the slave-girl, with a flash of a smile. "For you. It has been travelling to your doorstep for three months now, my lord. Someone wishes quite dearly to speak to you."

"How interesting. I wasn't aware I had friends so far in the West." All camaraderie had vanished from his demeanour - there was nothing but cold calculation left, grasping and hostile. "Can you read, girl?"

"Aye, my lord."

"Then read it to me," he commanded. The pleasure-slaves' tittering had gone silent, and the water sloshed over the rim of the tub as they slowly, unconsciously, shifted away from him.

_"Rytsas, nuhom daria,"_ the girl read, snapping the black, unmarked seal, unfurling the scroll, switching to the sharp, rolling consonants of High Valyrian with the comfort of long practice.

* * *

 

 

_'Greetings, my king,'_ the letter said. 

_There is a darkness in your home. Have you noticed it?_

_A festering parasite, that grows amongst your friends, with words sweeter than the finest elixir, with promises bright than the summer sun. Beware._

_There is a stranger at your door. Monsters, from children's stories, coming to your door. A foreign child, a benevolent danger, and you know better than to let it in. You see the invasion for it's truth - an interloper, a distraction, a threat. But that which might threaten you, aids the creature that seeks your drain you dry. Beware, my king, beware._

_There is a mother in need of aid. When the parasite calls you into its home, remember this - if you wish to live, send another to wear your face. Do this, remember this, and when you hear of the horrors befallen your comrades, know - another message will arrive at your doorstep._

_Follow my words, my king, and you will live to see another sunrise. Do not, and you will die._

_This is not a threat. This is not a promise. This is truth. Beware the enemy that wears a familiar face.'_

**Author's Note:**

> work and chapter titles from various songs by 30 Seconds to Mars.  
> on tumblr @dropofrum; come join me in my descent into madness.


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